Innovative Air Mobility Challenges the Air Traffic Management Paradigm: A European Approach to Safe and Efficient Operation of Vertical Take-Off and Landing Capable Aircraft and Vertiports

Abstract

Existing airspace structures, flight and operating procedures historically designed for conventional aircraft fall short of addressing the operational characteristic of VCA and vertiports particularly with respect to manoeuvrability, automation, digitalisation, and performance. Current European regulations for VCA and vertiports impose stricter flight planning requirements, such as the selection of diversion location. However, neither existing ATM nor the U-space framework provide the necessary information required by VCA operators. To address this gap, this paper examines four operational challenges: where to locate a vertiport, how to operate a vertiport, how to manage VCA at a vertiport, and how to operate and manage VCA within a network of vertiports. A consortium of 33 European partners investigated these challenges through three case studies in different operating environments (French Riviera, Balearic Islands, Rome), using ICAO's Global ATM Operational Concept as a guiding principle. The proposed concepts were validated through expert judgement, fast-time and human-in-the-loop simulation. The results show that the digital infrastructure of U-space provides an appropriate baseline for collecting and distributing vertiport-related information to all stakeholders. Nevertheless, current U-space regulation neither sufficiently addresses this use case nor supports VCA integration, instead VCA are treated as strictly segregated operations. In parallel, remotely piloted VCA lack a regulatory baseline for integration, while ATM does not yet provide the digital maturity and low-altitude coverage required for highly automated VCA operations. This paper elaborates the current European regulatory framework for VCA, identifies required evolutions in U-space and ATM, and demonstrates how vertiports can be digitally integrated into a traffic management system. The successful deployment of IAM ultimately depends on an interoperable integration of ATM and U-space, leading to a progressive digitalisation of the ATM paradigm.